Greenpeace Taiwan yesterday promoted its campaign to save the Arctic at a petition held at Taipei City’s 44 South Village (四四南村).
“The melting Arctic is under threat from oil drilling, industrial fishing and conflict. You can save the Arctic,” the group said in an online campaign initiated by Greenpeace International.
Greenpeace said the Arctic ocean has been frozen for more than 800,000 years. However, as much as three-quarters of the floating ice cap at the top of the world has been lost in the past 30 years, mainly because of the use of dirty fuels.
It is estimated that the Arctic conceals about 90 billion barrels of oil, which could supply global demand for about three years, the organization said, adding that there is a 20 percent spillage rate in Arctic oil explorations and it takes two years for leaks to be stopped, causing serious harm to natural ecology and threatening wildlife in the area.
The group cited research results in saying that the poles are warming at twice the speed of the rest of the world, so the Arctic is the most sensitive area facing global climate change.
“Protecting the ice means protecting us all,” the organization said, adding that Arctic ice reflects much of the sun’s heat back into space and keeps the whole planet cool, stabilizing weather systems that people depend on to grow food.
Moreover, there are only about 20,000 polar bears in the wild at present, but the rapid melting is making it difficult for them to survive. Scientists estimate that about 65 percent of the bears will be lost in the next 30 years, it added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching